Playing online on Backgammon Galaxy

Let‘s start with a few confessions: I hate „pay to win“ games. I‘m not talking Backgammon here, but normal games you download on the App Store or Google Play. These games don‘t feel like they are designed for you to have fun. They are designed, primarily to milk you for virtual coins so that you buy virtual coins with real coins. I also hate annoying sales people, but seriously, who doesn‘t.

That said, I‘ve come across three kinds of online backgammon sites: 

1. Those that seem to have been added to an app as an afterthought (Backgammon NJ). They just don‘t feel fun to play.
2. Those that stem from the ancient days of online backgammon - FIBS clients, Backgammon Studio Heroes. They are free, feature-rich, fun to play but the user experience shouts „I was designed in the last millennium!“. And particularly with respect to FIBS: downloading a PC/Mac client? In 2020? Seriously?
3. Those that (and that brings us back to my confessions) want to make money when you play backgammon. Sites like Backgammon - Lord of the Board that SCREAM at you! Win! Click! Pay!

But now here‘s 4. Backgammon Galaxy, a web site for serious Backgammon fans that is beautifully designed, innovative as hell, plays as great on a PC than on a phone. It has a few issues, but wow I‘ve seen the future of online backgammon.

This is how it looks. @Ychan if you read this and want your name removed, just comment here.

Playing a game on Backgammon Galaxy (iPad Pro)

Backgammon Galaxy features a very distinct, very simple, IMHO very beautiful look and feel, with a futuristic theme and a blue-ish design. Rolling, moving, doubling is all done as you would expect; I never ran into an issue trying to move a checker to a place or doubling. Currently, only match-play is supported with matches running from 1 to 25 points. You can also select three different time controls - fast is 8 sec per move + 20 sec per point, normal is 10 sec per move + 1 min per point, casual is 15 sec per move + 3 min per point. I love casual, gives you plenty of time to think. But if you want time pressure, you can get it :)

Matchmaking is simple: one player creates a game by filling out a simple form, entering desired match length and clock. The game offer is shown in a list. Another player accepts the offer and the game starts.

The overview screen. Here you can join a match offered by somebody else or create a game offer yourself.

There‘s also tournaments, but I haven‘t tried them yet. If I understand there's a registration period and a start time and then you do knockout rounds.

 

 

A finished tournament

Unfortunately there are no private games. If you want to play against a friend, this isn‘t easy here as your game offer will be there for everyone to accept and usually it takes seconds only until you get your match.

Once you‘ve started a match you play a normal match of backgammon. I love the beautiful UI, I like how they implemented checker movement - tap on a checker to move the first die, then same for the second, tap on the dice to swap, if you prefer, drag and drop checkers. I‘ve got two minor complaints, though. First, I don‘t see an animation or similar that shows me where my opponent has moved; the simple UI also doesn‘t show me the last move. Sometimes I have to guess what exactly my opponent did. Second: I don‘t get the sounds. Sometimes the game makes tiny clicking noises for unknown reasons; the one sound it should make („opponent has finished moving, your turn“) it doesn‘t. So I sometimes didn‘t notice that it‘s my turn again. But that‘s minor really. Playing a game of Backgammon is extremely enjoyable on Backgammon Galaxy.

Once you‘re finished, you‘re taken to the total magic wonderful game-changing killer-feature of Backgammon Galaxy, the feature while I pretty much stopped playing anywhere else. The Match Result incl. rating adjustment.

Game result of my most recent game.

Have a look at this screen. You see not one but two crowns. One for the player who won the match. One for the player who played the stronger moves. Now the thing is, you need both crowns to have your rating improved and vice versa. Win by luck although you‘ve played weakly - no point for you. Lose a match where you played like a God (like my opponent in the screenshot) because your opponent was lucky - you won‘t lose a single point. 

There are discussions going on whether this approach is the right one; after all, sometimes the right move is the wrong move. For instance, if you‘re playing somebody who is much weaker you might want to play an aggressive move instead of the optimal move. Personally, not encountering the frustration of losing against a clearly weaker but luckier opponent and losing rating because of this is a major step forward in enjoying online Backgammon.

How do they achieve this? Behind the scenes, the supposedly strongest Backgammon engine, Extreme Gammon, keeps track of all moves, and determines how far you and your opponents have strayed from the best move. And after the match it will tell you.

Which brings us to another fine feature of Backgammon Galaxy: having your games reviewed by a strong AI.

At any time, you can bring up a list of all matches you've played. In this list you can either export the match to have it analyzed by XG or gnubg on your computer, or you can use the beautiful and pretty decent built-in analysis that you can see above. 

The UI shows the list of moves of each game in the match, along with differently colored dots that show where you or your opponent made a mistake. Tap on a move to see a detailed analysis of that move:

You need to learn a bit about equity (no big deal), but then this analysis shows you nicely what the best move would have been and how far off your move was.

Of course, this being a free online backgammon, you won't get the full power of XG to analyze your matches. For lowly <1750 ranked people like me, it uses XG with a 2-ply analysis. That is way enough and tremendously helpful. Still: if you download the match to analyze with a PC you get a much stronger analysis (XG spends 250 times more time analyzing each move).

A big construction site: in several places you come across pieces and bits that are under construction.

 

You can't play private games, you can't play money games, you can follow somebody, but that doesn't seem to mean anything (like "challenge a friend", getting updates about their progress etc), you can't create tournaments on your own, you can't use whatever the blunder DB is going to be etc. There's even a premium membership that, well, isn't there.

But that's not bad. I hope all those features will appear one by one. Until then what's there is well enough to play some wonderful games of backammon.

Backgammon Elite is not elite

 To start with the positives: Backgammon Elite has a really nice in-app concept - the basic game is free; you pay for additional Backgammon variants. No ads! And the board graphics are just as beautiful as the checker animations. Good job there.

My first game against Backgammon Elite. Nice graphics. But the engine... I‘m black. Notice how it didn‘t even seem to try to make a board?

If only it would play Backgammon. And if it would play the game, which it thinks Backgammon, reasonably well. But it doesn‘t. And it doesn‘t.

First: as said several times: the doubling cube is an essential ingredient of Backgammon. Without it you play the much less intricate game that Backgammon used to be before the cube was invented.

Second: Sorry to say this, but this game plays like a beginner. And there are many apps out there who don‘t. You cannot learn anything by playing against this app. You can learn so much, including how enjoyable the game can be, from eg. XG Mobile or Backgammon NJ.

My second game against Backgammon Elite. Still nice graphics. I‘m black. Notice how, again, it doesn‘t attempt to make points?

Many years ago when I was studying computer science, I actually spent a week or so writing a backgammon engine. It was playing poorly. I was beating it soundly most of the time. But it played much better than this engine. You know, basics like „Low stacks have a higher value than high stacks“ or „ownership of the 5,4,3,... point has some value or „the value of a blot is how many good points it can help slot - the number and hit probability of opponent stones“ are real simple to do. So it‘s a total mystery to me how the developers of Backgammon apps invest so much time into a beautiful presentation of such a poor engine.

You‘re still here? Then a few more facts about it. It doesn‘t feature online gaming, it doesn‘t feature matches, it has basic „who has won how often“ statistics, and a „2 players pass the device back and forth“ two player mode.

Off to the next one.

Big Brother is rating you - the next generation of online backgammons

Okay, maybe I'm the last person on earth to learn about this. Apologies if I'm selling old news as new news to you then. For me, spending some hours with Backgammon Galaxy (henceforth Galaxy) and with Backgammon Backgammon Studio Heroes (henceforth Heroes) was an eye opener on where online Backgammon is heading.

The two sites are very different. I will review them individually later. For now let's say that Galaxy is fresh, clean, beautiful, but also under construction and lacking many features, while Heroes is bursting with features, but under a presentation layer that looks like Windows 95. Also, the two use the "Big Brother", but very differently.

The "Big Brother" is Extreme Gammon (XG), the PC program that I'm also using here in order to tell you objectively how good Backgammon apps are playing. Like Gnu Backgammon, but much speedier, XG plays a God-like backgammon far above what the best humans can pull off.

Now suppose you can integrate an omniscient Backgammon God like XG into your online site. What would you do?

Backgammon Galaxy

Galaxy goes the non-compromise, clean, beautiful way. Honestly, I sat there in shock and awe when I saw what it does. Unlike every other site (Chess, Go, Backgammon) that I know, it doesn't adjust your online rank upwards when you win a match or downward when you lose a match.

Your rank improves if you

a) win a match

b) have objectively played stronger than your opponent in this match.

Your rank declines in the opposite case - you lose and you have played objectively weaker.

Bummer. 

What this does it it takes the frustration (loser) and embarassed feeling (winner) out of the game, when you win a match against somebody who was outplaying you, but just didn't have luck on her side this time. Because if you win, but performed worse than your opponent, nothing changes.

After a match you get to see a screen that tells you how you fared (e.g. won a 5p match 5:2), and how you performed (e.g. you had an intermediate performance of PR 11, your opponent an experienced performance of PR 9). And then it will tell you how it updated your rating. In our example, nothing will happen. You've beaten your opponent, but she played stronger than you, so the Gods of Backgammon decide you get no reward. Here is their own explanation of their system.

 

Here‘s an example of a „1 point game“ I recently lost. My opponent got the one crown for winning the game. I got the other crown for having played the better moves. As a result, the Galaxy rating of both of us stayed unchanged.

A note on PR: this "performance rating" is an invention of XG that by now is even used to rate and rank the performance of the world's strongest players in BMAB , the Backgammon Masters Awarding Body. The PR reflects the number of errors you objectively make. A "super grandmaster" has a PR of less than 2.5, an advanced player between 6.5 and 10, a newbie 20+. This is, of course, varying largely in different matches. Some matches only give you easy to assess positions, some are so tricky that you blunder over and over (worst: you continuously misjudge whether to double and the situation stays similar for several moves). I've had single games where I was ranked "world champion", I've had single games where I was ranked "distracted". Even Mochy, arguably the strongest human at the time I'm writing this sometimes plays games on "expert" level only.

Of course you can critizise this approach -  in some cases you play in a certain, non-optimal way on purpose, maybe you play against a much stronger player so you play more conservatively, or maybe you're behind and feel the need to play extra aggressive. But in my opinion the advantages, the good feelings you get by removing the "DAMN I WAS SO UNLUCKY" results from the equation, outweigh these massively. And you know that you have to find the objectively best moves to improve your ratings.

Backgammon Studio Heroes

(man this is a clumsy name, I still always have to look it up everytime I write it. Why not just call it "Backgammon Heroes"?)

Heroes goes a more compromising way. It offers you totally normal backgammon matches, albeit with the Gods of Backgammon (XG again) informing you about your skill and luck, which is already good - sometimes you feel that you've been much better but totally out-lucked, only to learn that she wasn't that lucky and you weren't that much better after all.

But Heroes has, among its myriad of match types, a few that are truly special.

 

 

Heroes' match types (in the overall screen; see what I meant about Windows 95?)

 

The coolest one is "PR Match". In this match you play a normal match of backgammon. But the winner is not who won the most points. The winner is who had the better PR in playing the match.

Cool is also "Blundergammon". XG considers a move that is 0.08 points of equity or more worse than the optimal move as a blunder. In this match type, the player who makes the first blunder immediately loses.

So while I personally prefer Galaxy's no-compromise, beautiful, clean approach to ranking, Heroes is also an interesting approach, giving you the traditional backgammon experience (if you want, even without the big XG brother watching you - that's the "plain match"), and lets you choose to play for PR or non-blunders instead of points.

But both sites show how much you can do if you have a god-like engine running in the background of every single match. Do I need to mention that both sites also give you strong XG-based analysis capabilities that help you improve your game. 

Highly recommended. (warning: on an iPhone, Heroes looks like shit, you need a tablet or computer to enjoy the game; Galaxy looks very beautiful on any device, but this I'll cover in reviews later)

 

Updated my reviews of a few apps

Nothing new today, but quite an overhaul of my reviews of XG Mobile and Backgammon NJ, which still rule planet iOS Backgammon. Don't let them tell you otherwise. 

After playing a few more matches with XG Mobile and having the PC XG analyze it I am amazed how strong XG Mobile is. Far better than every human being.

I also played some matches against Backgammon NJ. I love how you move checkers there. Strength-wise it's not on par with XG Mobile, but on par (in fact a tiny bit better) than the currently highest rated human. Good enough for me, I guess.

Also added screenshots with different visual designs to the two apps. Enjoy!

 

 

XG Mobile can look quite different to its standard design, if you want.

Get my men out of here, sergeant! (Backgammon Now Review)

Backgammon Now was featured (maybe just for me) on the Apple Store and got some fairly good comments there so I had to try it out.

The app has good graphics, a reasonable price for getting rid of annoying ads, and implements pretty much the full rules of Backgammon. I couldn't check whether they feature the Crawford rule, though. Because I win all my games with something like 32 points. And this brings us to the heart of Backgammon Now's problem: it has no clue about Backgammon. 

Have a look at this:

This is the position after three moves - on hard difficulty, which is the strongest that the app offers: black (Backgammon Now) rolled 65 and actually pulled off the right move (that happens once in a long while), moving 1/12. I rolled 32 and moved 13/11, 13/10. And then the app rolled a beautiful 22. It could have gone 19/21(2), 12/14(2), or maybe 1/5, 19/21(2). But of all available moves it picked 1-9, taking its back man and putting it into three direct hits.

And this is the general pattern of how BG Now plays: it wants to get the back men out. Now. It has no understanding whatsoever about slotting, making points, direct vs indirect hits. It just piles up its men, and when it can hit, it hit's. At least that's something it can do.

Here's a few more beautiful positions it got itself into.

 

Did I mention it doesn't know when to double as well? It seems its doubling rule is "if my pip count is smaller than his pip count I'll double or take". It kept re-doubling although it was trapped behind a 6-prime. 

 

Backgammon now handing an initial roll of 62. Moving the 1 checker doesn't achieve anything. A builder on 14 would have been great, or slotting 21. But no. I HAVE TO GET MY MEN OUT!

This is a typical position that we always end up with. I'm building a good base, while it just ignores its home and outer board completely. It then gets hit over and over and has half of its checkers behind.

 

I try to be fair when reviewing apps. I'm a computer scientist myself. I know the amount of labor and passion it takes to create an app. But either the developers themselves have no clue about Backgammon (then they shouldn't develop a backgammon or learn how the game works first), or they don't care about releasing an app with the worst AI on the App Store. Then they should go back to the drawing board.

If you're a total beginner then ... no, not even a total beginner should use this app, because it won't teach him anything but how not to play Backgammon.

Why is this the best move? (another one)

 Okay, dear readers, I'm sick at home with an awful cold (plain normal cold, nothing covidish) and have time to play and analyze a few Backgammon games. Here's another position that stunned me:

I'm white and have to play 61. The move 8/2, 3/2 looked straightforward to me: it extends my board to 5, it doesn't endanger my back men - the men on 19-17 seem to threaten building a bad board, fast, if they get a blot to hit, and it only leaves a single blot 1 away from 7.

XG doesn't like this move at all. In fact it believes that the best move keeps the game equal, while mine brings it down to -0.28, so I lose a third of a (1 point) game with this move.

And the move it suggests is... 22/16, 3/2. WHAT? 

Let's look at the dice distribution for my opponent after the two rolls:

 The first image shows my winning chances for each roll that the opponent can do for the XG move, the second one does the same for my move. Example: first image, column/row 3/4 shows +0.082. This means that after XG's move if the opponent rolls 34, the outcome will be a 0.082 in my favor. 

A few interesting observations: other than I thought, only 33, 44, 55, 66 are rolls I have to fear when playing the XG move. Moves like 43 that I was fearing are probably not so bad, because black will only have a 3-point board and a blot that I might hit as well. 31, 41, 54 that I also feared (hitting me and moving on to cover its own blot are still not too bad for me for the same reason - a 3-point board isn't too bad.

On the other side,  the same doubles 33, 44, 55, 66 are similarly bad in my move. After all, my two men are trapped behind black's little prime; if black moves his trailing men safely forward with the double, he can wait for my men to pass the prime.

My lesson for the day: if confronted with an intimidating prime, look whether things are really as bad as you think.

 

Why is this the best move?

 Have a look at this simple position:

Without much thinking, I played 24/23, 13/11 here. This adds another builder, splits my back men, looks like the straightforward choice.

However, XG stubbornly recommends 24/21 as the best move. Mine is fine, too (-0.05 worse). But still, why should I not put a builder on 11?

The answer is probably that the builder doesn't help much - I already have the 5 point, 11 is too far away from the four point, and as my 8 point is stripped and my opponent has a stone on 2, building the 7 point in the next move with e.g. 11/7, 8/7 is not an option. Also I underestimated that black has some really great rolls like 55 or 44. XG (on Roller++) also says that 13/10 would be slightly better than my move, because then the builder on 10 actually has something to build - the 4 point.

On the other side, black has made the 18 point, threatens to make the 20 point, so helping one checker to escape is reasonable.

Sometimes the straightforward move is not straightforward.

Do you agree? Any thoughts are appreciated.

Is Backgammon trivial compared to Chess and Go?

 Some time ago, in a social media service that doesn't exist anymore, I made a bold claim. I claimed that Backgammon is as complex as Chess and Go. People didn't agree, and without evidence I found it difficult to make my point. 

Let me try this again, here in this blog :-). In Backgammon you come across several kinds of complexity, like making the right strategic decisions.

Making the right strategic decisions

Let's look at a few tricky positions in my recent (lost) match to 13 against Extreme Gammon Mobile (print and analysis by XG for the PC, Roller+) and see how tricky things can get in Backgammon.

 

 

Here I'm white and rolled 63. I have a couple of issues: there's the blot on 21 that I want to save before B hits it and occupies more slots in its home board. I've got no good home board whatsoever, and an awful stack on 6 that I need to shrink. So I thought it would be logical to play 21/15, 6/3, getting my blot in a safer place where XG can only hit it with a 3, and go for the 3 point with limited danger (only a 2 can hit me). Okay, in most cases it will hit me, but I hope to achieve one of my goals: save the blot or make an additional point.

I was wrong, but not by much (0.1 points of equity). The best play is more conservative: 21/15, 11/8. Probably my mistake was that if I get hit on the 3 point, both parts of my plan are moot - I have not made a point in my home board, and I have another blot left behind that it can attack.

 Same game, one move later - XG rolled 63, hit my blot with 12/15, and moved 4/10. I rolled 41 and found myself in this tricky position:

Black has a lot of blots that I might want to hit. 20 with Bar/20*? Looks solid, lets me attack the blot on 15 in the next move, but weakens my blot on 3 even more (any 3, any 2 will hit it). Or hit on 10 with Bar/21, 11/10? I have nice builders on 11 and 10 then, my blot on 21 can hit its blots on 20 and 15. Or maybe I play conservative Bar/24, 7/3, have a 2-points board, save my blot on 3, and look which of its many blots I can hit on the next move?

I decided for Bar-20*, and yay! I was right. Actually my move and the conservative Bar /24, 7/3 get nearly the same score by XG, although they will lead to very different games. My other candidate move, Bar/21, 11/10 gets a beating by XG - it loses nearly 1/3 of the game (-0,29).

Calculating risks properly

A part of Backgammon where I really suck is calculating risks properly. Take a look at this position.

That's a fairly easy one, you would guess. And I still managed a major f..k up. My reasoning was: yes, this is my chance to fill my 1 spot, make a 5 board by playing 8/1, and all for the minimal risk that he might hit me on 8. XG tells me I lost half a point with this decision. The best move is the simple and conservative 13/8, 13/11. Why is my move so bad? You have to look at the dice distribution for black's next roll to understand:

 

 The first image shows how the game will evolve after the best move. The second image shows my move. Two things can be seen: first: I underestimated that clearing the 13 point and keeping the 8 point is really important. All my followup moves are some 0.3 worse than necessary. And if it hits me with 11 (which it can also use to make the 21 point, I've moved my chances from 0.6 to -0.7. Keeping track of such "anti-jokers" is really important, because they can turn around the game in a single move.

That doubling cube

The doubling cube is a fiendish addition to Backgammon. I'm losing much more points by messing up my doubling than I do with poor moves. There's a couple of reasons: I forget to double because the action is so intense. I take where I should pass because I underestimated "anti jokers" like the one above. And I pass where I should take because I'm worn out and just want to stard a fresh game. Let's see a few examples.

 For me, the situation was clear. There is a good chance that I can't enter my stone against XG's 4-point board. And if I do and hit at 23, I have this blot on 7, need to get 3 stones back. Pipcount is nearly equal. A clear "no double". 

XG says I should double. I'm still confused why, when writing this. Probably I didn't consider that this is a match to 13, and in this position I'm trailing 4-10. If I double and can't enter, re-doubling is not as grave as normal because 4-14 is the same as 4-13. And as the AI believes I'm slightly leading, and have a few killer moves (2 + anything, 11), I should double.

Let's see another one:

 

 Here I didn't double. I'm well ahead, but I'm scared of moves like 21 that would give XG two shots at my poor blot, while having a 5 point board. XG tells me the correct cube action actually is "double/pass".

It's roll distribution looks like this:

 Yes, there are a number of really awful rolls for me. I didn't even think of the horrible 6-6 where I can't move at all, or 6-4, 4-4 where my blot not only stays in danger, but actually has to stay at its current spot, 4 and 6 points away from black stones, very likely to be hit. But most moves bring me to certain victory, and if your winning chances outrank your losing chances like that, you should double.

Stamina

Now this has nothing to do with the game itself, but I notice that in a match to 11 or 15 my performance degrades as we progress. In Backgammon, about half of the positions you get are totally straightforward. Some are immediately visible as tricky, and some look straightforward but you manage to not see an important move. And I, personally, manage to often miss important moves less later in the game.

 

Tactics - not so much

In my opinion, Backgammon delivers the same challenge concerning strategy, planning and mental stamina as Go and Chess do. But other than chess and go, Backgammon offers only very limited tactics. In Chess you need to play a number of likely move sequences in your mind to see how the game will evolve with this or that move. In Go, this is even more prominent, "reading" a position well is key to win local battles. In Backgammon, there's the dice, and calculating the outcome of the game with every single die combination is not something you can pull off. Really good players can detect critical "anti jokers", and the best bots look ahead 3 plys.

My conclusion

Backgammon is a much faster game than Go or Chess. Tournament chess and go matches use something like 3 minutes per move. Games typically last 6 hours. In Backammon, clocks are set to 2 minutes per match point. A tournament match to, say, 11 points then lasts for max 44 minutes. A single game lasts for something like 3 to 4 minutes. After all, the lengthy calculating of variations is not a part of backgamman, and this is the part of Chess and Go that eats most time.

And that's my conclusion: In terms of strategic complexity, Backgammon is a worthy peer to Chess and Go. But the combination calculations / tactics in those games are just not there in Backgammon...